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Marvel's Inhumans TV Show Feels 'Very Different' From The Comics

The Marvel Cinematic Universe version of the Inhumans will be noticeably different than their comic book counterparts. With the recent reveal of its first trailer, Marvel's Inhumans is shaping up to be quite the spectacle. Though we only see bits and pieces of the series in the trailer, it began to become clear to some fans that this series will deviate significantly from the comics, in certain respects.

Screen Rant recently sat down with some of the stars of the show and asked about some of these differences. Some changes, such as Black Bolt not wearing his classic comic costume, were done to help ground the series in the shared reality of the MCU. Others, like Crystal and Karnak not being strict interpretations of their comic counterparts, are a result of the creative team trying to define how these characters exist in the MCU (which already differs from the comics in a number of ways).

We spoke to Iwan Rheon (best known as Ramsay Bolton on Game of Thrones, who is playing Maximus the Mad in Inhumans) and asked him about the role that the comics played in his preparation to play the character:

SR: When you work on a project like this, a project with a lot of anticipation coming towards it, do you as an actor look at the script that you're handed to sort of inform you for your character performance or do you go back to the source material and sort of pick things out that maybe nobody would ever know about other than you that helped to inform the performance for you?

Iwan Rheon: "Yeah. It's kind of a combination of that. With this, I did some sort of research into the Inhumans world and to try to gauge what it is all about and what it is, but I think then that I work predominantly off the script. But, as I've been doing it, then I've been sort of reading some of the graphic novels and some of the literature that is out there about it, which has helped in certain ways. But it does feel very different to the story that we've started telling here. And I don't know in terms of the storyline whether this is something that's happened before with Inhumans. I'm not really sure. So, yeah."

This isn't to say that the show will be completely different from the comics, of course; some aspects such as Medusa's hair are reported to be very comics accurate. Several actors have reported reading up on their characters to help bring the flavor of the comics to their performances as well, including Sonya Balmores (Auran):

"...It helps me with is the just mindset of the difference between...because the thing is we look like human beings. Well, some of our characters, but we are not. It's such a different culture to get into the mindset of, 'Why are we different than humans?' You know, especially cause a lot of us on the show are Americans, like the Inhuman family is not American. They aren't even human. They aren't from Earth! So it's kind of like to get their thinking and I was reading Black Bolt and he has a lot of cool internal dialogue about how does he lead his people and our diversity unifies us and all of this stuff. He has great stuff, so I am very loyal to the king, so I actually liked reading about Black Bolt."

From the sound of it, Inhumans is trying to let its characters develop in a way that makes sense for the show (similar to the differences between David and his comic counterpart in Legion) while most of the cast is looking to the comics to better understand the characters they're playing. Some may be skeptical, but for other fans this might sound like the best of both worlds.